We had success with the drive letter bit -- the boot drive is now the C: drive!! I tried starting the Setup from Windows (I know, silly me), and that didn't work, so I did it the right way. And since it didn't have to format the HD's, I was left with all the downloads, etc., and they only had to be reinstalled.

But -- I have a new problem. I have a dual boot screen where it asks which do I want to boot:

Windows XP Professional
(or)
Windows XP Professional

I did look and somehow there is a Windows installation on the 300GB RAID 1; though it is not the one I am booting. How do I get rid of the dual boot screen?

Is it just using fdisk /mbr ? Or do I delete the second Windows and everything on the D: drive, or what?

Don't use fdisk /mbr... you just need to edit boot.ini as ilh said. You can get to it through the system applet in control panel as he explained, but it might be a bit quicker just to open it directly in Notepad. It's a hidden system file in the root of the C drive, so you need to unset the attributes by bringing up a DOS prompt, entering "cd c:\" and then "attrib -h -s boot.ini." Then you can just type "notepad boot.ini" to open it in Notepad, where you should see something like this:

The Windows installation you want to get rid of on the second array should have the higher RDISK number, so that's the line you want to delete. Make sure the "default=" line is referring to the correct OS, so it looks like this:

With some controllers it might say "scsi" instead of "multi" but the same procedure applies.

Then save boot.ini, reset the hidden and system attributes by entering "attrib +h +s boot.ini", cross your fingers, reboot and the system should boot straight into your desired OS without bringing up a boot menu. Then you can just delete the Windows installation on the second array...probably best to reformat the partition to make sure it's completely gone (a quick format is good enough).

Thanks again -- I now have a computer set up the way it should be! I actually did a few of the settings in the dialog, like setting the delay to 0 seconds, and then I just deleted the second line in the OS section. BTW, in order to make sure I would delete the correct one, I first changed the name of the one I thought was correct, and then rebooted, and after confirming I had the right one, I then deleted it.

I also just reformatted it -- thanks; because in some places, it was reporting 278GB instead of the total capacity of 279GB...now it is empty! I also now have plugged in the USB header for the memory card reader i nthe Mitsumi floppy unit, and they show up as they should -- will miracles never cease!

I'll post some (low rez and slightly fuzzy) pictures in the gallery when I can upload them to Photo Bucket. Things have worked out pretty well, in the end; thanks to the timely pointers you folks have provided. Thanks again for your help.

So, has anyone got their hands on the Soltek K8T890Pro-939? Anyone know where to purchase this board in the USA? I have had a Athlon XP Soltek board for a few years and have thoroughly enjoyed the performance (and underclocking/undervolting). While I have read many rave reviews of the Soltek K8T890Pro-939, I do not know where to get it since Soltek closed their American distribution a year or two ago.

Wow Neil! Thanks for posting your progress and impressiosn with the Gigabyte Card. I'm still hemming and hawing about getting this mobo or the Asus AV8, but with the pre-installed passive HS, and $40 savings on the MOBO itself, I'm now leaning towards the Gigabyte...

I decided to go with the regular version of the Gigabyte 6600GT video card with the stock heatsink/fan and then replace it with a Zalman VF700-CU VGA Cooler (or maybe VF700-ALCU since I am a little concerned about the weight of the CU). I think it may work without the Zalman fan running, or at worst case at low speed (it is switchable). The main drawback is the amount of space that is lost on the MB with the Zalman.

I have read about a few people who complained about very high temps with the Gigabyte heatpipe version, and some people end up using a separate fan (albeit quieter) to blow on the heatpipe anyway.

BTW, that site you mentioned does not seem to specify IN STOCK / OUT OF STOCK for their items. Anyway, since you have already posted the link, they are are probably out of stock by now (which is what happened on the other site mentioned above).

What are the chipset heatsink temps like after the PC has been working hard, eg running [email protected] for a few hours? I don't suppose you have temperature monitoring, but the finger test will do...

Do you think the heatsink benefits at all from the airflow caused by the graphics card fan? It looks from the pictures I've seen that the bulk of the heatsink sits "up" the board from the graphics card PCB, so I'd guess this would be less of a factor than with some other layouts...

I purchased at the first location above (before I found the link at MicroCenter) and it works fine, but the cable is not long enough to reach to the PCI-E slots, and I had to use up a PCI slot on the case.

the ECS KN 1 Extreme is a sweet mobo will every feature imaginable incluing both gigalan and wireless Even has a couple of extra SATA channels beyond a basic NF4 ultra. Has a PCI slot that is especially low-noise for soundcards. At Newegg,nice price. Appears to be plenty of space
to passive the chipset. Mobo has a small duct+fan to cool diodes near CPU.

My idea is to remove that fan and let that duct serve as air in,with case fans all exhaust and CPU fan blowing hot air FROM the CPU instead of blowing toward the CPU. Note Silent and overclocking are not very compatible. An Athlon64 3000 can be,at regular speed,very powerful and very quiet. Overclocking means you need a chipset fan and more RPM's on the heatsink fan. Artic Cooling's TC fans are thermal control,min rpm a real quiet 1000 rpm. A few of those as case fans would allow a mild OC by running faster when there is load. I don't know how well Cool N Quiet works with OC'd boards,but it's important if you want quiet

What are the chipset heatsink temps like after the PC has been working hard, eg running [email protected] for a few hours? I don't suppose you have temperature monitoring, but the finger test will do...

Do you think the heatsink benefits at all from the airflow caused by the graphics card fan? It looks from the pictures I've seen that the bulk of the heatsink sits "up" the board from the graphics card PCB, so I'd guess this would be less of a factor than with some other layouts...

I don't have the machine anymore, and I did not get any detailed temps -- case and CPU in SpeedFan where as far as I got. The SATA drives were in RAID1 arrays, so their temps were not accessible, either.

The NB HS did get fairly warm to the touch -- it probably did some air flow from the CPU (XP-120 blow-by) and from the video (though this is probably minimal). I blocked off the side panel vents, and so the front intake on t he Evercase (w/ a 92mm Nexus @5v) would also have "reached" the NB to a certain extent. I feel pretty comfortable with it's temp.

The 1GB RAM sticks were actually the warmest items (to the touch) in the case. Since they have far less surface area than the CPU, the video, or even the NB, I still okay with this. They were warmer than I've seen RAM get in the past (and they do get fairly direct ait from the XP-120).

due to problems using the integrated LAN, and the resulting 50% loss of your PCI slots (1 of 2) from an extra card.... I would recommend against the Soltek K8T890Pro-939 *until* they fix the problem. This is unacceptable.

What specifically was the problem with the Soltek's LAN? A couple reviews showed it slower than the gigabit LAN on other boards, but since I'm not on a gigabit network, I figured it wouldn't make any difference.

The LAN performance difference between the Soltek K890Pro with Via chipsets and nForce4 chipsets is inconsequential, even if one is using a gigabit LAN.

The problem is that the Realtek Ethernet on the Soltek seems to have a problem staying connected and/or negotiating properly with some other LAN cards or hubs/routers. It would only negotiate at 10 mbps when connected to a 3COM 10/100 card via crossover cable. Maybe it would work better when connected to a another Realtek card or with a another gigabit device. I found similar reports of LAN problems with this MB on this and other forums.

There also seems to be an Ethernet problem related to the use of an Audigy 2 sound card. Depending on which PCI slot the sound card was placed in, affected whether the Ethernet worked at all (there are only 2 PCI slots on the MB).

Soltek support in Taiwan said that their Audigy 2 card is broken and they can't test it, and could not recommend any configuration changes to fix the problem (like maybe PCI IRQ sharing, etc). I asked them if they intend to get a new Audigy 2 card, but did not get a response back on that. They also forwarded the problem to Realtek. I tried the latest Realtek driver and MB bios (both very recent) to no avail.

Normally I would just put in a 3COM 10/100 Ethernet card and disable the Realtek, but with only a total of two regular PCI slots on the MB, I did not want to do that (especially since the other PCI slot is used for my Audigy sound card). I also hate to give up gigabit Ethernet if I ever upgrade my LAN.

So I RMA'ed the MB and got an Asus A8N-E (I will have to replace the chipset cooler). Unfortunately, I forget to remove the Thermalright XP-120 Retention Mechanism from the old MB, and I am scrambling to find another one.

There were also some other issues that concerned me with the Soltek K890Pro:

- Very strange PSU voltage reporting in the bios (compared to multimeter readings on a live board). I was using a PSU with a 24 to 20 pin connector to the MB, so I don’t know if it was related to that.

- Corrupted files copied from a CD-ROM to a hard disk using the secondary Promise SATA controller (non-RAID).

- Very high CPU temps reported (although this may be because Soltek reports more accurately than other boards which just use the spreader temps, and not the core temps).

I found out its easy to tell how many pins a motherboard has for the power connector, just count one row on the image and if its 10, then its a 20pin, if its 12, its a 24pin, since they have 2 rwos, so 12x2=24pin

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